 It's the mat work. Baw, what's up everybody? Once again, it's Brandon and Shawn, and we have a very special series for you guys. Today we're kicking off something, and this is episode number one. I know a lot of you have probably followed the music news that matters newsletter, where we cover what the news is and why it matters, right? We cover some very important topics that have happened every single month, and we've dropped that newsletter on the first of every month. Well, we've decided to now do a podcast in addition. We're on the first of every month. We're gonna be dropping a music news that matters podcast, where we expound on it even deeper for you guys to really get an idea of why these things are so relevant. And of course, we'll cover some topics that are on the newsletter and vice versa. So first and foremost, I wanna introduce you to the person who even brought me this idea in the first place, content director at brandmannetwork.com. And so many other things, right? I'll let him describe himself to you and give him a little bit of background before we get into this first episode. But Joshua, Joshua Coase, introduce yourself to everybody. Glad to be doing this with you, buddy. Me too, good to be here. So hi everyone, my name's Josh. I've been working in the music industry for the past couple of years. Started out in music journalism, worked for various publications, including Majestic Casual. I was one of the founding editors of their editorial website called Majestic Journal. And then I sort of moved into more marketing and artist work of managed couple of artists and producers. And I currently work in music PR, one of the UK's leading music business consultancies, where we work with a range of clients in the trade market, more so than the consumer ones. But my main background now is obviously music PR and working at the brandman network as well. Oh dope, man. So, I mean, let's go ahead and get into it soon because our goal for this podcast is very simple, right? Like what the music is and why it matters, but I think a better way to say it is we wanna make it as digestible as possible, right? For especially the indie artist, right? Because things are so, so many things are happening, so many new opportunities are happening. But of course it's hard to keep up with things. So we wanna help people keep up with things by first giving you the most important things that have happened that month, you know, fact four or five versus this whole list where it's just, it's deep, it's dense. And then also of course explain based on some of the things that you might not know. So let's get started with an interesting topic. Well, as a matter of fact, tell us an overview of the topics that we'll talk about today, but then let's go ahead and get it to number one. So we're gonna cover some legal music law. We're gonna cover Spotify, YouTube, Facebook, lots of things going on on all their fronts. And we're also gonna get into a bit of TikTok as well as some marketing trends for 2020 to look forward to as well. Cool, so number one, let's go ahead and do that one. Yeah, we're going in hard, it's very complicated. So this is the case act, which means the copyright alternative in small claims enforcement act. So again, it sounds really heavy right off the bat, but essentially if this law passes, it's gonna make it a lot more affordable for artists, producers and songwriters to claim for copyright infringement without going through the federal court for the legal process. So it's got one more vote to go, it's got go to the Senate, but it did pass the vote in the US House representatives by 410 votes to six last week. So look set there, it's gonna be passed. And what it means is that you don't have to pay and that you don't have to have an attorney, you haven't got to go to court yourself either now. If you have to file a copyright infringement, you can earn up to $30,000 in damages and it doesn't seem to a lot on the face of it. But when you compare that currently it would cost you more than $200,000 in legal fees and the fact that you could only really earn $750 to $150,000 if you did win the case, $30,000 with a maximum of $5,000 in legal fees doesn't seem so bad. Yeah, exactly. It's interesting because of course, like you said it, you have this idea of, yo, well we can't get this huge number that we possibly could have gotten before, but when you just think of a quality versus quantity perspective of that, it just makes it so much easier to do more of it and face that issue, where now I don't have to worry about the complications of a lawyer or just even understanding that process, which a lot of artists don't even necessarily know how to deal with. And of course those lawyers take those fees. So if you make $150,000, once you factor in that lawyer fee, that's gonna be a far smaller number and a plus a lot of people aren't getting $150,000. A lot of people are getting less. So then again, you still have to pay your lawyer. So just to be able to go in without a lawyer, of course you have to be registered. So that just makes the process so much easier anyway. I think that's a part of it. It was like, okay, if it's straightforward, why do we need this extra layer or middleman in the process? I'm thinking that's some of how they're looking at it. But then, right, since we don't have that and we go ahead and finish the bill up, I'm interested to see why they decided you could only do it in small claims. That's the interesting part to me though. Like why are they limiting it to up to $30,000 when, okay, I don't need a lawyer anymore, you're saying, but the damages are still equivalent. Nothing has changed there. I'm confused about that part personally. I have to dig in deeper. So they've claimed that the idea behind it is that it will deter copyright trolls and anyone trying to take advantage of the system. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But on the flip side, I'm kind of thinking because the barriers to entry is now so low, we're not encouraged them. Because obviously it's not gonna cost them anywhere near as much, it's not gonna cost them much to do it. Right, right, I forgot, know what, I forgot we even talked about that the first time this came up. Yeah, that trolling issue, I agree. When the barrier is that, you know, low, they people have time, the quantity thing doesn't have that big of an impact on someone who has the time to be a troll in the first place. So it sucks that the actual artist or a real person will have to suffer just because they have to create some kind of systems, insurance for a troll. But I think it's gonna be interesting to see if this actually passed, and I think it will. But- I think it will, yeah. After it passes, I wanna see people actually use it. And those are the more interesting stories for us to cover for sure. So the idea is that the cases will get heard by three judges in the copyright claims department. And they won't do every case, they will review the cases beforehand, they're not gonna, so they do sense it's some copyright trolling they won't actually hear the case. So there is gonna be some sort of like order to it. And also the fact it's important to mention that you don't have to register with copyright to own a copyright for your song, but if you do want to claim, you do need to register, which will cost you between $35 and $55. But if you do it, if you wait till after, you've already had the infringement, it's gonna cost you like $800 plus. So I really encourage you, if you think that it's gonna, if someone's gonna infringe your work and you think that it's gonna be a possibility, I would register way beforehand, because if not, you're gonna get yourself into, you know, a lot deeper water with it. Yeah, yeah, that's probably the key takeaway at the moment is we haven't got a chance to watch any other cases in real time. Just go ahead and get your copyrights. Go ahead and do that ASAP, because it is easy, man. The fact is you don't even have to show up in court. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's crazy. All right, that's crazy. I gotta do some more research. We should cover this again on a future episode, but when it comes to like why this and who are the main characters in getting this passed and push and buying for this, because I'm trying to figure out the incentive, right, government doesn't just do anything without some incentive or somebody pushing from somewhere. But that's, it's too helpful for artists on a service level. Yes, it's generally just for creators in general. And I think a lot of the campaigns have come from a creative background and they know that most creators can't, you know, they can't fight for their work. They can't represent themselves. They just, it's just too higher entry level. They can't afford the legal fees. Like, so they're essentially saying that you, you know, oh, your copyright got infringed, that sucks, but you can't do anything about it. And that's sort of been the way it has been because the internet has created all these problems. Yeah, and it makes more sense. I think the biggest thing, right, is it just makes more sense for the new industry of such a high content model industry, right? And not just music, just anything, like you said, creatives, like it's just so much content. So making it easier to actually go through, right? But also limiting the amount that's taken. I think both of those also go to that structure as well, where it's not as long and drawn out. So we can get out of the way. But we're, they're probably getting more and more of these. I don't know how many, right? But they're probably getting so many of them that the resources of court aren't even there. And I don't think people realize not just when it comes to content for artists, but I mean, just regular legal issues like criminal activity and things like that. There's courts that have issues in terms of having the resources to convict as much as they want to and things of that nature. So some of this might be helping with that side of the process as well. And to think of all the claims they're gonna get of this case that passes that we got like photographers, they're constantly getting their work, you know, used online without their permission. And it's just gonna be a, it's gonna be a lot. That's why I think they put the caps in place. So the caps are $15,000 per case, but you can up to $30,000 if you wanna do two different ones in the same case. And then it's $5,000 max in legal fees. So yeah, that's all, this is very, very much, how can we handle quantity model? That's so in that went that add to, right? If you wanna throw two in, you're getting the two for one model. Yeah, yeah, for legal fees. Neighbor. Yeah, that's dope. I think those are my entry level thoughts on that one. What's the next topic, man? Let's get into the other. Yeah, so just around that one off, there is no date set yet for the vote in the Senate as I'm recording today on the 1st of November. Yeah, there's no, but I imagine it'll be quite soon. I definitely before the end of the year, I'd imagine. And yeah, we'll see if it passes, I'm sure it will. So next up we've got Triller, which is sort of like a rival to TikTok and they're making a bit of noise in the news right now because they've just raised $28 million in their latest funding round. So I guess the question is now, are they gonna establish themselves as a bigger player on the market? Considering that now, in this new deal when it's new funding round, all the major labels now own a stake. And that's not the case for TikTok. And I'm thinking they're gonna prioritize the content and music licensing for Triller because they've got invested interest in it. Yeah, my thing is there's probably, all right, for the labels to all get embedded with each other in one form of fashion. One, they have to believe in, there has to be threat, right? They're not gonna just do it for fun. So they really have to believe in this platform, the value that they want to get revenue from it. But two, the threat not only is these types of apps as well, but even bigger TikTok. I really think these labels look at TikTok as a threat, especially with TikTok starting its streaming service. Obviously it's not available to all, but TikTok, I forgot the name of the streaming service. We'll get into that, yeah. Okay, cool, yeah. So like doing something like that, I believe TikTok is actually one of the bigger players that has one of the best opportunities to really speed up that process of hurting labels, right? Taking the power away from labels. And why I say that is because one of the greatest assets that labels have that's keeping them in the game, essentially the intellectual property of the artist masters and past deals, that legacy that they have. So when you want to use them on different platforms, that people now have to talk to them, right? Whereas like the app has nothing to do with them, but kids and behavior naturally starts to bring that type of music on their labels. They're like, hey, you can't just use our stuff without our permission. That's one of the biggest things that have kept labels in power outside of just the brand and the whole system that's already been in place. They have kept artists continuing to go there. But as the industry starts to evolve and more artists start going indie, right? Naturally, the labels have to say what assets are starting to come in? Like we're not renewing and adding assets that are gonna last another year because even though these songs are, there are a lot of songs that are, you know, classics and things can be remixed forever. There still has to be some sense of a bell curve. Of course, the long tail comes in so they're making a lot of money in general from just even songs that aren't making a lot when you add up the fact that they have a lot of songs and a lot of songs making a little equals a lot. But each of these hits, right? Of course it makes a lot of money and then, you know, eventually you wanna get another hit, right? So that's kind of their model. When you think of something like artists not signing the labels as much and then look at somebody like TikTok who saying we have power to blow up artists really. They have that built into their platform and then getting into other facets of the music industry because that, they don't play, man. Tencent and, well, Tencent or Byte Dance, I always- Byte Dance, TikTok. Yeah, Byte Dance, they are swallowing up a lot of different aspects of the game, right? That is ultimately gonna give them an infrastructure where they want to stay in house in some way. Like they'll have a lot of power that labels don't, they aren't able to compete with because the behavior is already on people's platform on the front end. So I think that's really interesting in terms of just the threat and it really shows the hand to me of what labels understand, right? They understand that they have to get into where their attention is but that's not the game they play. So of course they have to invest to get into it. So, man, I'm interested. The labels are obviously investing in Triller. You've got Google acquired Firework and they're trying to do their own version of TikTok now with this Firework app. So there are, they'll see- Tell me about them. I don't know too much about it but I know that it's a very similar sort of platform to Triller and TikTok and Google have acquired it trying to do their own version because I think they're recognizing the importance of the platform and it's just a jumping on the trend as it were. You know what, I think I did hear about Firework. I know some, well, I hadn't been on it but I think I know somebody who said they were on it. I think when your artist mentioned it before, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, one of the artists- Was it the idea that it flipped around? You could, the video rotated? Yeah, it was something weird like that which it was hard for me to figure out why it mattered but yeah, I guess Firework is something we'll have to look out for. There's so many apps and different types of opportunities for people to take advantage of. It's a lot for content creators to know where they want to settle down. But Triller is making noise, you know, 28 million raised. It's got 13 million monthly active users, 60 million downloads. Like it is, you know, it is a big player now. And I'm just wondering because they have, obviously TikTok's ruffled so many feathers with the royalty payouts, the streets of the labels and the fact that it's banning a lot of content. I'm just wondering whether some users may navigate away. Yeah, TikTok and Triller, not TikTok. Triller and Dove Smash have focused a lot on the urban market, far more than TikTok. Yeah. Especially the urban market in the US, both of them have focused very heavily on it. But right now, just sheer number wise and adoption rate wise, it's gonna be hard for them to compete. Whenever you have the evolution and maturation of an industry, especially in tech, right? It's usually only gonna be like two platforms, right? That last. And because things are so categorized today, a lot of times it ends up being one platform. So an example is how you have something like MySpace. MySpace is big. And then you have Facebook. Facebook's even bigger and then gets rid of MySpace, right? And then Facebook pretty much has that game on lock. Now Twitter comes with a completely different direction, right? Instagram came from a direction, different direction, Snapchat. And then like these other ones are fitting in different categories and angles. But now we just have this one massive Facebook thing where it's like it's here. Or, and the reason that is when it comes to these apps is the network effect. Because and the network effect is essentially saying there's a utility to how useful this thing is. If it doesn't hit this certain threshold of people being on it, it's not even useful, right? Because it's a social network, right? Like if only me and you are on it, it's like, okay, cool, I love Josh, but I need somebody else to be on it for me to talk to, right? Yeah, exactly, yeah. Which is why these apps typically, like Facebook, they weren't as strategic on it. But so many people followed that model because it works for a good reason. It has a lot to do why they moved. How Facebook started in Harvard. Well, that's the perfect breeding ground for virality, right? All these kids on top of each other, they know each other. And even though it's not the whole world that's on it, it's their whole world. Yeah, yeah. So they feel like it's omnipresent to them in that small environment. And then you roll out to another college, roll out to another college. Apps can mimic it in different, apps can mimic that in many different ways. But the point is that the network effect is very real, where eventually just comes to a point where, yo, look, I wanna be on this other one, but I just have to be over here because everybody's over here. And so it's not as useful. Nobody's posting here because we're not gonna post on them but in different apps. So when you look at this game with TikTok, Triller and Dovesnatch Smash, one of them for very short is not gonna be here. Right? You know, you add in fireworks, okay, cool. Two of them is not gonna be here for sure. Probably only gonna be one long game. Somebody might get acquired and then get integrated into Instagram or Twitter or one of these bigger networks, but that's gonna be really interesting to see. What makes TikTok so powerful, I guess, is that the early adopters were all of, you know, Generation Z, the young users. So in fact, 66% of the users are under 30 on there now and they found a safe space there where they could, because they thought Facebook and Instagram maybe was like a bit too old for them, but they found this safe haven on this platform and now everyone else is slowly moving over. Yeah, because everybody's on a follow, follow them and of course they're gonna age up as well. Exactly. Like it works like that and just the fact that they're so ahead of the game numbers wise, right? Behavior is huge when it comes to this app. Like, well, not this app, just pretty much everything. When it comes to adoption and people being used to it. So the fact that they already have so many people used to that, it's gonna be hard to get somebody to switch over the triller, barring whatever else that might happen that really benefits them and pushes people off TikTok. Who knows what could happen, it's not impossible. But once people's behavior is in a groove and you have them and then it starts, once again, that network effect now just starts to add up and grow in and of itself so organically, and of course TikTok is trying to do things like get celebrities on, right? But a lot of celebrities are actually holding out because they realize their value these days. So it's like, why do I just, I'm not gonna just start when I know TikTok will actually pay me to get on in the first place. Exactly. You might get on TikTok and suck for a bit too. So you will be showing your real market value to TikTok and they're like, oh, well, we don't wanna pay you that much. So it might drop the value. So a lot of people are literally strategically holding out just so they can get paid a lot to get on TikTok and then figure that out. So some of those things are there and they have TikTok on the fringe more than it would be if it was just a free marketplace, none of this other business type of stuff in consideration. But once that scale tips, I think it's gonna be just so obvious and move so fast. The days are numbered to me. I think I personally think it's too late for a Triller and they could be a very strong number too, right? They could be the Pepsi to Coca-Cola, but you guys drink Pepsi and Coca-Cola out there heavily. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, yeah. Are those the big two or is there anything else out there? Cause he's- No, they're the big two. Yeah, they're the big two. Cool, yeah. But see even in like drinks, right? Big two, right? It's behavior, right? There's only gonna be a couple at the very least and in the long, long term, however, we're so niched today, there could be value where we might see a small change in that where there's just these platforms that settle on a middle class success as a tech app. But tech apps are usually looking for billion, which is why they usually get inquired. But yeah, there might be some apps that last and just have some kind of a weird one-off utility. They still have a lot of weird websites out there that I didn't even think that would be out there these days. I don't know if you know of E-bombs World, but that was probably a website I came across back when I was in middle school and was spending more time than I probably should have. And literally just yesterday, I saw a link share from there and I was like, whoa, y'all are still around? But once you find a niche that our sites have the ability to keep re-inventing themselves and staying within those niches. So that might be some kind of weird utility that Triller finds in itself. What we'll see. I guess the other comparison I was gonna say is that you've got TikTok and Triller, also similarly in the live streaming department in eSports, you've got Twitch and Mixer. Obviously Mixer is owned by Microsoft. It's just on the come up now and they've taken away some of their big stars like Ninja they've bought their made deals with. But again, they're probably a bit too late to the game to really take on Twitch. Exactly, but hey, that's strong number two and I didn't know they took Ninja. I didn't know they took Ninja. That's usually a great, so from a business standpoint, man, that's usually a great look for like somebody who already has a lot of brand value. Let's say Ninja in this case and Jay-Z did this with Reebok where you already had the strong number one and I'm gonna go do business with the number two because I'm gonna have more value to them so I can get a bigger deal. So I'm sure they pay him very well. Did you not see that Twitch then discraced themselves in response because Ninja's channel was obviously still on active on Twitch and they decide, I think Twitch decided to broadcast like pornographic videos and images on his channel. What? When he left. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, I remember reading this and I was thinking, wow, there's PR nightmare if you're involved at Twitch. That's what I was thinking about. It wasn't a hack. They did it themselves. Well, that's a bit of a debate but I kind of, it looks like they might have done it themselves. Yeah, they probably did it. But how low do you wanna go? These kids have tuned in to watching life. Hey, if they have the guys of, hey, we got hacked, right? They could just, that might just be a PR move, right? They're like, hey, somebody else did it. We just got our name going, but yeah, that's crazy. That's interesting. I think people have seen through it, yeah. That reminds me of something where one of my friends, her, she works in marketing in a completely different industry, like medical, whatever, something like that. But they lost an award. They, I think they even get into, well, yeah, they just, they lost their award and her boss was like super mad. He's like the director of this half a million dollar company. And he got drunk that night. He comes home and he tweets how like I'm angry he was about it. Right. But he wanted to make sure that people saw it. So he boosted the post. He paid like a hundred dollars for like all his competitors and people to see it. But that kind of petty is interesting. When you look at that and what Twitch is doing, it's a lot of hilarious stories of people leveraging their petty and just to get it seen. But it creates conversation as well. Everything is content these days, man. You know the angle that people are going from. So it's going to grab the headlines at the end of the day. Isn't that so? That's what we're going to see. Not mixer. We're going to see, yeah, Twitch to this, right? Yeah. Just before we move away from TikTok, as I mentioned about bike dancer streaming app now, because it's been rumored since April they're going to make a rival one. And we think there's a lot of reports searching online. I think you might have found my name of it called Yin-Yu-Bang. So that's Y-I-N-Y-U-E-B-A-N-G. And at the moment it looks like it's going to target emerging markets primarily like China, for example, to try and rival Tencent. It's not available yet on the app store in Android or iOS in China, but there's a website already up. And their slogan translates to listen to popular music, make like minded friends. So I'm wondering whether they're going to go down the social route, kind of like how, you know, when Spotify first came out, Yin-Yu-Bang is the name of the app. What, oh no. I was just saying, you made me think of Loom, because it's a combination of streaming and social. What I was going to say is remember when Spotify had those functions when it first came out, you know, you could message people directly on the platform when it was really integrated with like Facebook and things. There was a lot more social, and they took all those elements away. Yeah. So I think they're going for the model of trying to make it an incredibly social, which is interesting. But it wasn't what I was expecting, because I thought it was going to be more of like a big mainstream rival to Spotify for music. But I guess they're starting small and focusing on the emerging markets to try and build out from there. Yeah, that's the only way to do it, really. If you want to do things right, it's always going to be a start small to test. And it was completely new business for you. I think that it makes sense, especially to do it in a void of emerging markets. So you once again already have that behavior. It doesn't mean it doesn't matter how cool this thing is in the rest of the world. This was the first mover to the marketplace for us. And this is where we are on. So it gives them a lock in that space. And why not experiment and become better in a space where other people aren't used to this anyway. So they don't even have a barrier to judge as much as me. They're not going quite big, though, because China has got 10 cent. It's still quite a big statement to try and get in there. That's very true. Yeah, I guess that speaks to how much they also don't need us. Like in America, we often forget how big these other places are and how much infrastructure other people have in place to do things as well. But I think that this is going to be something that they probably are going to look to expand. But they're probably going to end up rebranding that name at some point. Yeah. All right, how that works. Just like TikTok was obviously TikTok. Tion. Yeah, there we go. Yeah. So TikTok got a different name. Then of course, they started acquiring everybody else's. What was it? Musically and all those things. Once we got a name we want to settle on and now they go worldwide. It's going to be something very similar. But I don't know, man. Disconsumer bait and switch is inevitable all the time with these apps. I wonder if people truly see incentive to stay social and like music streaming focused at the same time. That's what Loom is saying they're doing. It's a version of what these people are saying they're doing. They're not pushing it as heavily as a part of their narrative as Loom is. But so many of these apps, right? They make it as awesome for you, the consumer as possible, until we get you on there, right? Till we hit that network effect, that threshold. And then we start to do some other things, right? We take away these features that got you here. But you know you're already hooked on the crack. So we know you're going to come back anyway. But they may keep the model because obviously we're moving a lot towards the dark social at the moment, which is where I'll see most of the networking is now is in private messages and private groups and networking. We're moving away from the open world of Facebook, Instagram, and everyone's not making their own communities. So they may be tapping into that early because there's still very early days for that. True. That's a very good point. That's a very good point considering the fact that everybody is making things so personal when we get into the fact. It's almost to the point where it's like in a couple hundred years or however many years, people will always have their predictions on that kind of stuff. But it just seems like in one way or another, people are all trying to live into their own world. So maybe even the delusional will actually have a reality that they can live in at some point. Because first we're making everything so personal to us and we're able to access this very specific environment we want to be in. And then you start building out things like VR and other things. It'll be interesting to see where, like I said, it would be just the world that we have a choice to live in. And we're choosing to go in and out of these different environments that we're building. It is the largest referral, like sharing platform now. So we're taking Facebook, the terms of the dark social is now bigger for sharing than Facebook is. So these private groups are, yeah, they're taking over now. Yeah. I like it. Yeah, I've got some stats here. It was 84% in 2016 and in 2018, it's now the largest referral platform for sharing content. So everyone's moving towards these private communities. So if these streaming platforms get that right, then sharing music and all of these private communities could be a real winner. Yeah, that's gonna bring more calls for AI and marketing over these years because it's so hard to message everybody, all these individual communities, but everybody once again, they want things to be so personal. So of course the overarching message would be valuable and a company that wants to be big and connect the masses ultimately still needs to have that overarching brand feel, but maybe not so much today. It's like, okay, we went from one big message and connecting people because we monopolize attention to one big message. And then also the ground message trying to cater to all these different specific environments. We'll have the people that look like this speaking to your environment and we'll just hire all these people to focus on your environment. But I guess it wouldn't be out of question for at some point for there to be a company that almost is completely like I said, built off of AI where they're actually able to hit a scale because their marketing allows them to hit let's say 100,000 different communities and they don't even focus on the overarching message. They just message it. It's almost like selling one to one at scale, right? It'll be that constant. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, all the private messaging, yeah. Right, like our private messaging because direct messaging is still the strongest to me. Like direct message, direct sales have always been the strongest to me. Even- Yeah, SMS is still big, yeah. Well, yeah, but like even if we go to old school, right? SMS is still just mimicking communication and text that one-on-one. So if we look at the door-to-door salesman or our cars, like someone who's able to speak to you and then handle your objections and give you more context, right? Yeah. As we have built out more technology, we'll have the ability to create more context at scale on an individual level. And that's when that messaging is gonna get so important. So it's almost like you're having a digital door-to-door salesman. You know what I mean? And people have to- Yeah, I think that's the direction we're heading in. That's what Facebook, obviously, is seeing in a good space right now because obviously they are the gatekeepers for Facebook groups and they've got Messenger-like. I mean, I only keep Facebook because of the groups and Messenger-like. I'm not a big fan of the actual social network platform and like, you know, the news feed and things, but because I wanna be in these certain music networking groups and I will say I wanna have Messenger, I stay on the platform and I use it. So that's sitting in a good space. Finally get back into the game. That's to both worlds, yeah, so, yeah. That's the direction I think we're heading in, so. We'll definitely, I'm sure we'll be talking about this soon, but wait till they continue to integrate themselves into Instagram, all right? Yeah. Facebook isn't, they're not going anywhere. They're figuring out one way or another, they're gonna control some aspect of the game. Definitely. So I guess we better get into Spotify because they've been making a few interesting moves. I mean, the biggest one is that they're finally opening this two-sided marketplace because record labels can now pay for sponsored ads on the platform. So in particular, they are now offering these, you may have seen the brand new music for you, pop-up alerts come up on your phone over the past couple of years when one of your favorite artists released a new song, it gives you an alert and starting off now in this like base testing in the U.S., record labels are gonna be able to pay to push to you these alerts like notifying when your favorite artist released a song. So it's the first, obviously it's the first opportunity where they can actually pay to influence and then have pay-per-click ads. So it's a pretty big move. That move is gonna be, it's gonna be big, especially for Spotify as a company, right? Spotify still isn't making money, right? Which it's not abnormal for a lot of these tech companies because they invest so much in market share and control in the marketplace, they figure we can make money later, but still for them to actually find a true revenue model and start to be able to profit is also, it's gonna be beneficial for them as a company and allow them to do more things. And from an artist standpoint, the fact that we're able to reach out to these people for real, for real, and get in front of people for real, for real on Spotify, I think that's gonna be way better. Their ads program is getting better. The ads weren't necessarily worth it before, but it's still not great. But for me to just say, even from a sheer visibility standpoint, I'm able to beat a pop-up essentially, right? There's a lot of power in that. Of course, there's a limitation of how they're starting off where you can only market to people who are already listening to you. Exactly, you're not gonna have to track new fans this way, yeah. Yeah, like that. So there are any artists out there, right? We're not there yet where you can truly use Spotify natively to be able to stand fan base or I would recommend that's the first platform to start off with more Facebook ads to get you into Spotify and using that. Exactly, yeah. But at the same time, this is the start of it and it might come. And even bigger than that though, well, one of their starting this off with record labels. So, okay, it's not even accessible yet. That's always gonna happen, beta, you wanna test with the big money and certain people. But as they even push that down the stream, for an artist to be able to even communicate to people who've listened to them before, it's still powerful. There's a lot in that. Because just to remind people that you would exist in a world where there's so many options, it's definitely meaningful, right? It's another way to let you know, because I might have missed your media run and all these interviews that you did because that's just the day and age we're in, right? I might have missed some of your Instagram posts or some of these other things. So for me to even just be retargeted, while I'm on the platform, that ultimately I will be listening to you anyway, it's powerful because to not be on Facebook and then say, oh yeah, you say, I'm gonna have to go over and remember to go over to Spotify and all that stuff. No, it's one barrier. Oh, it's here, let me click. Beyonce just dropped a new project. Just click a button and instantly listen. It even gratifies that quick, instant aspect of things. I think that's gonna be something they find to be very useful. I hope it's something that in some ways can get rolled out to in these, right? The lower levels of things. I think it'll be soon. I mean, they've already tested it since for two years. So I'm sure this is inevitable, wasn't it? It's formality of their space testing with these labels. They know the value of it already. I don't know though, right? My issue with it is one, are they've tested it for two years and they're rolling it out to big labels? Cool. But they've been rightfully so and I appreciate it that they've been very methodical about how they allow advertising to work within their platform, right? I know of a lot of companies and talk to CEOs of companies that were trying to do integrations with them that have partnerships with every other platform except for Spotify. One, I told them, I was like, look, it's pretty obvious. Well, when you look at the resources that Spotify is working with, they're probably going to be like, I'm going to just do this myself. But also it allows them to be in far more control, right? They're having a very Apple approach and a lot of things that they do. And because you have to make sure that you're not ruining the user, the listener's experience at the same time. Yeah, exactly. Which reminds me, we did say. You can turn it off. Yep, the users can turn it off. If you've got a premium account, you can disable it, but you have to disable it. It's going to be all-mattery enabled. So that's the key. It's never, it's never going to start off. None of these features are going to start off with you being able, with it automatically turned off. Otherwise, you don't know about it. It's not up to, not up to, yeah. Always opt out. As for forgiveness, not for permission. That's always going to be the model. Exactly, yeah, that is the way, yeah. Yeah, because I was actually talking to Corey the other day and I was telling him out, like just this kind of stuff, right? That behavior a lot of times I'm just going to keep clicking X, right? As opposed to going in and turning the whole feature off because I had this example of myself, if I had this alarm that would remind me of one of the calls that I was supposed to put him on back when we had a system where I had to get on like Zoom and then he gets on Zoom. Yeah. And when I created the alarm by mistake, I had it on every single day. So every single day at 8.59 p.m. Eastern time, it would go off. But I just cut swipe. All right, it's off. Yeah. It's a one day my girlfriend was just like, Brett, cut that shit off. Like stop because she got tired of it running. But like that's a small case study for how user behavior works, right? We're going to opt for the easiest way out for as long as possible. You'll get this alert. You'll either go to the Almos or Track or you'll close it. You would then go, oh, I'm going to go through and turn that off. You're just going to leave it. You're not going to go into your settings and then go through and I don't want to see these again because if it's targeting eyes, you actually like, you're going to want to see them anyway. Exactly. And that's the more important part because since that barrier of behaviors already there, it gives you a space to work within as long as you don't violate that, you'll make sure it's still on because once you get people turning it off, now you kill the long-term value of it. And that's the bigger check that they'll be looking for. But the reason I look at it when it comes to an indie standpoint because indies don't necessarily have the same rules, right? Indies won't be as methodical possibly, right? There are going to be a lot of people who try to, like, all right, let me just blast or don't use it as artfully. So they'll probably have some restrictions into how they allow it to be used. It's just, because there is plenty of value in the long tail though, it always goes back to that even though it's not this big one off record company payment to use this platform in the advertising budget, you have, I don't know, one million artists trying to spend $100 and thinking they'll blow up off of it. And you add that up, there's $100 million like that. It's still a very viable income strain but it'll be interesting to see how that rolls out over time but this is one of the more meaningful Spotify updates in a long time. And it gets even bigger because I've been doing some research like I was like looking into their presentation about this, you know, about the third quarter of this year and the plans moving forward. So the founder, Daniel Eck, was saying that, like, March 2018, Spotify for Artists had 100,000 artists on the platform. Now there's 465,000 and they account for 80% of all the streams on the platform. What were those numbers again? So 100,000 March 2018, now it's 465,000 and they account for 80% of the total streams on Spotify. But more importantly, their goal is to, their current target is for one million artists to live off their music and they're looking into a lot of new ways to monetize the artist-to-fan relationship. So they're looking at, he has said that they're already looking at micro payments and tipping artists as well. So they're actively testing these features. So we're gonna see them, you know, probably next year. It's just the first of a long line. So this is such massive news because they're finally opening up this, you know, this artist-to-fan relationship, how to monetize it. The two-sided marketplace on Spotify is open now. This is just the beginning. And it's so important because- And it's the power of specialization and owning that space. They have so many possibilities to really get into that Apple music doesn't seem to be thinking a part of because that's just not their full focus. It's just one of their brides, yeah, it's just- Yeah. Yeah, Circle was actually talking about that, brought that up to me while I wasn't thinking about it. But yeah, just, it's interesting. Like when you own in that specialization, of course you can go far deeper. It's just that simple. So I think that that's really cool with that idea of having one million artists as a goal to live off their music and the tipping feature. That excites me. And the tipping thing is so much more of a revenue stream that I think these people have realized. One, of course- Yeah, crowdfunding is big, yeah. Yeah, like TikTok, right? The money is getting made on TikTok right now. Yeah, of course, yeah. Just from the tips. Obviously Twitch was the first platform that I had never encountered that was really doing it at scale. Now this is something not even foreign, basically, when it comes to China. China, when it comes to monetization of a tech platform and all these microwaves, the stickers, the tip, like their users are so trained for it, it's a ridiculous amount of money that people get paid based on, I'm gonna buy you a whole bunch of stickers and all that kind of stuff. But, and that's why I think TikTok is so early in doing it at the beginning of their platform, right? Because obviously it's like competing in that space and have dealt with China and all that stuff. But tipping is going to be, yeah, I don't know, that's just been one of the most interesting places, right? It's part of your culture anyway. It's integrated into the U.S. society. Like it makes sense to incorporate it on the online world. Why did that never transfer over so much? Which funny, because it wasn't until I became a waiter that I realized that tipping is so much of an American thing and not necessarily a rest of the world thing. It wasn't until I went in there and I was like, this is totally different to, I'm just trying to work out how much, so how much do you give? Like I was like, so what do I do in this situation? Like you want me to give you more money? Is that what you're doing? I was just trying to work. Yeah, it's like all new concept to me. So it's interesting, yeah. I think that tipping thing is something to watch though because it blew my mind when I used to watch games on TikTok a little bit. I'm not TikTok Twitch back in the day, but then a lot of it was just doing some research for another project, a tech platform. I was trying to build out and it was a tech music platform actually. And there was this story and I saw like this girl got like a $30,000 tip, right? It was like $1, $5, $1, $3 and it was $30,000. And I was like, holy shit. I was like, this thing is, and then after like seeing that, I found out that wasn't a one-off thing, right? There's other people getting similar big tips. That's just a crazy world to me, man, but it truly is probably gonna be far more normal than we expect. It's the best revenue stream for us, it's gonna be, because you can be able to set different tiers like you do on Patreon, like you can start influencing what they create and what they talk about. It's just the whole bringing back to the personal one-on-one engagement, it's just gonna be so much more powerful. So I think it's a very exciting time for Indeed, I think, for the moves that Spotify are making. And particularly with the other feature we're gonna talk about, which is the Spotify's Canvas video looping tool, which is the visuals you see sometimes in replace of the album artwork and they're rolling it out now to more artists. If you're part of Spotify for artists, you can now like request an invite and join the wait list to get this feature. And what's good about it is that not only can you do it for upcoming releases, you can also go back and add canvases to your old releases as well. It's a whole new way to like communicate your brand and your story because you've got three to eight seconds to create this visual that can link more into who you are as a person. Like you can get really creative with it. You could tell a story through like three to eight second clips of all your different songs. Like you could start up, your very first release could have the start of the story and you could just run this like narrative throughout if you really wanted to or you could just do everyone separate. There's just so much room and growth for it. Yeah, I think Spotify is starting to get it right, man. Because of these last few announcements and things that I've been hearing. But first up, before I get into that, one, if you aren't clear, anybody who's listening on what feature we're talking about, one, the only project I've seen it on so far was Trippie Red. It's an exclamation point. That's the name of the project. So I can't really give you a name. It's just an exclamation point. Trippie Red with two D's. But essentially, yeah, you're listening to the track and usually it has an album cover or a picture there, but he used actual fans for his project. So he had fans that use his filter of, like your IG filter or something where you can look like them or look like anything else. His fans had his tattoos and he took those fans and put them on his project cover. So that was like a cool activation for them, right? It was a cool social thing. But that right there, that small level of communication, because I think right now, you can only have that one picture on, it has to be the exact same video, moving video for the entire album. I don't think it can be track to track dedicated yet, which probably is true. Some of the tracks will be, it depends if you release them as a single or not. Yeah, so the singles will be different. Yeah, they can't do the whole album yet, yeah. I don't think so anyway, but. Right, right. But it will get to that point. It will definitely get to that point. Exactly, turn the whole narrative through, that would be really cool. Yeah, and I'll see, the move towards visuals is interesting because obviously you question the future of the album artwork, if we're going moving towards this video, sort of like integration thus. So this is what I was thinking was interesting because I want to know what you think about that because when I look at a lot of these other moves, it's far more about the advancement of music and advancing the user experience in the artist's ability to communicate that expression, which of course enhances the user experience than before when it was like, we're trying to figure out how to gain as much market share, fine revenue models and build because this is the world was going because they wanted to get into video heavy at one point. I don't know if you remember that. They stopped doing music videos, didn't they, on the vertical ones and that, yeah. Yeah, they did, but they stopped focusing on the music videos. And I think they saw, hey, this is an entirely different business, technically. Sometimes things can seem more of the same business than they actually are, right? Because once again, that ability to go in depth and handle like there's so much that hasn't been done and innovated in the music listening experience alone, a video business, just because there's so much video and all these other platforms could be a distraction from it. So I love to hear how, of course, these are micro moves that also mean might injure in the same place, but there's so much innovation that is happening in cool steps that I'm hearing like moves like this that are happening in the meantime that haven't been done before because they're just enhancing the music versus just trying to get into another game. That's how I see it right now. They're clearly taking influence, inspiration from GIFs and how popular they are on social media because obviously these are very short visuals and I think in the future, you might rather have an album out, you might have like a GIF instead, like a moving GIF, might be the album out instead and then you have the longer visuals when you actually go on to the now playing now playing view of the song. But what surprised me the most is the actual stats they've got for how much of an impact it's had for artists. Like they've said that, yeah, they said that it's increased streams about to 120% and increased sales about to 114% for these artists. Wow. And these are public figures that they've said, yeah, so, because obviously I think they've been testing it for the past since January and I guess they've decided that actually these figures that we should roll out further. Like I didn't think it'd be that impactful. But how do you say? Yeah, I think one, well, how long are the visuals? Because I've watched them obviously. So three to eight seconds. Three seconds. It can be three seconds or it can be up to eight, yeah. That's it. A lot of ones I've seen are like, there's three different versions. Like there's ones that like constantly loop and you can't, you can try and work out where the cut is because they're so fluid you can't tell where the cut is. Yes. I like that one a lot. Yeah. Because I was going to say the one that I saw was, it seemed like it was so much longer but I was probably like four tracks in until I realized, you know, they're just showing the same people over and over again. But it was super clean. It was super clean. But I think that's something to watch. All right. And I only say that because one, there could be a sense of novelty. All right. And because that's not existing anywhere else on the platform that might help produce those sales is something that people aren't used to. It's for communicating effect. The ones things even out and they have more people doing that. I don't know how much that would increase sales versus another project. Right. It might create a new medium but it ultimately increasing sales, not increasing as well. Technically streams can be sales but increasing the streams. Yeah, you get the idea. Yeah. Increasing the streams. Maybe if somehow that long in the longterm creates more incentive to be on Spotify as a platform and maybe as they continue to add features it just keeps people off other places and allow people to have more time spent on Spotify. Just period, right? Your time on the platform. Maybe they would truly be a longterm increase in sales but short term, the sample size is so small. I don't know how much weight to put in that just yet just because of the novel part of it alone. Yeah. What I do like is that you have, some of them are just using bits from music videos of their music videos but some of them are actually like a lot more that you get a lot more meaning out of some of them and you would do them behind the lyrics stuff because you're actually, you're seeing what you're interpreting as it's happening in front of you on the screen. So rather than just reading the lyrics and making your own interpretations you're actually seeing a bit more of an insight into what the artist was thinking when they wrote the song or the vision for the song or the track meaning and it's just a lot of different creative way you can do it. Yeah. So you can just take the music video where you can create something exclusive for it and it can really just enhance listener's experience but most of the time I listen with my phone locked so I don't even see these loops again on that's the other side but it's interesting. That's the thing, right? Where I said there's the difference between short term and long term of how it really affects things because if you are saying to me, yo, this not only makes people wanna see, check out the project because this thing is just cool and I will, maybe they're now not just listening passively people are more likely to look and listen than there's a true impact to Spotify as a company and ultimately the music that gets consumed on that platform that'll be interesting but yeah, I liked what you said about the additional form of expression because the example I had, Trippie Redd, he used it as something additional and that was really cool to see and if people don't get lazy and just take music video clips and create something, right? Use that as additional space to communicate it could get really cool and now, like you said, but it might not replace completely, right? Cause we have other photos and platforms but people will be now thinking about our moving album artwork, just as much as they're thinking about their aesthetic artwork, that's cool, I think that's dope. And tagging on to your point, you mentioned earlier about the album and the idea that eventually you could have every album track have different ones, like you could tell the entire story through the album, that sounds really cool to me, like, you know, if you're saying, oh, like there's this special version of the album story, the only on Spotify, if you go and watch all the visuals, like that'll encourage people to go to that platform to listen if you've made an exclusive, sort of like story for your album on the Spotify only, you're going to get listens to go and watch it there, they're big fans. Yeah, man. All the promo you've got for that is great. Yeah. I love it, man. Look, man, these graphic designers are going to become more and more important. Yeah. Animators, all that, they're going to, artists are going to need one. Got a potential like 90 second story you can tell over an album then, if you're using the eight seconds for each one, you've got about 90 seconds, which is, you're more, that's all you need really, you can tell a key story. Yeah. So I think it's got a lot of scope. It just needs some refining, but definitely, I think it's a good feature. I'm surprised how impactful it has been. I'm not sure how inflated the stats have been, but I guess there must be some truth to them. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So moving on to YouTube, couple of stories from them, the big one that I think it's kind of under reported is the fact that they're going to end the support for third party pixel tracking early next year. A lot of the marketers have been picking up on it, but no one's really got into what it could mean, you know, for the actual advertisers on a more, smaller level, like for artists in particular in the music industry, because obviously a lot of artists run ads on Facebook and Instagram, with the view of getting YouTube views and subscribers. And the fact you're not going to be able to see, if you're using a Facebook pixel, the fact you're not going to be able to see the impact it's had is going to be a real bummer. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think that that sucks from a marketer standpoint. I think why you don't hear more people talking about it is that reason that so many people are on Facebook and Facebook has made that so easy. And when it comes to YouTube, they don't even think about it. They don't even know about it. There's very few people who know what a pixel is outside of Facebook pixels. Right? Yeah. You know, that they are the ones who introduced that concept at scale to so many people. So that, you know, people who weren't even thinking about that type of thing before. So I think that's part of the lack of this. And I think maybe, nah, I don't know. I can't say YouTube probably saw that or looking at it that way. But it won't be as much of a war because people won't know what they're missing. We're not going to hear much about this from an artist standpoint or just a general level consumer standpoint. But it does suck to me because obviously look at the market, I'm trying to track every single thing that I can do. But I always say myself though, I haven't used any third party pixels on YouTube. I just haven't gotten to the point where I was doing a campaign that large and dedicated on YouTube where I wanted to get that deep into the details. But I don't know, man. That these... So I want you to take on it because I struggled to understand fully the consequences of it. But what I found interesting was the fact that cookies, the pixels, can't even track mobile apps. So the fact that most people watch YouTube on an app and you can't even track that anyway, I think that's why Google are making their own version of the tracking because you can't do it with the pixels. Wait, so explain that part to me again because I hadn't heard that. I remember seeing a note, but what was that? So apparently a lot of the pixels, they can't track integration into mobile apps. So if you're going into a mobile application, it can't track that. So that's why Google made their own version because obviously most YouTubers, most people watch YouTube on the app. It's like 70% of users watch it on the app and these pixels can't track that. So that's why they're making their own version of it. The ads data hub, which they've made, is their version of being able to track this. Okay, well to me actually where I am thinking, and when I hear this just from my interpretation, this makes it far easier for me to integrate and use Google. So it sounds like Google ads is becoming more comprehensive which is something that I've hated about them in comparison to Facebook, but Facebook is a unicorn right now and just as far as their level of in-depth ad platform to offer to just general level consumers, but this makes them more comprehensive and makes them more in-house and easier to use and see more in-depth pixel data and that tracking. So I'm actually happy about that because the third-party pixel is a thing in itself. These third-party pixels, a lot of them charge you, right? Because their servers, how do they make money if you're just a pixel business, right? A lot of them are dealing with that even though some of them are just collecting the data and use that as a revenue stream as well. But for me and even as someone working with artists and communicating to artists, I would be, I'm excited about that actually from a standpoint of, look, now I might be able to teach artists how to use Google pixels and find that same value or similar that I could find in Facebook because like the third, especially for an artist, let's just keep it there, right? Yeah, it's called Comcade, yeah. Having to deal with another level of information, another level of integration as an individual artist is just a lot, it's too much, right? Are you dealing with enough? So I like that they're making it simple and bringing it in-house and revealing something I feel like that they should have been able to do for a long time anyway, considering who they are, right? Google, come on now. Y'all really started this digital ad-based platforms, like y'all really got that popping. So they should have been had something like this. And the other story from YouTube is their new partnership with Merch Bar to sell merchandise. Obviously you mentioned in our conversation before that there are other companies like Teespring that you can sell merch on already, but this is the first one that's focused just on the artists. So YouTube is now starting to pay more attention to its music and it's really sort of concentrating on that because Merch Bar is just for artists. So the idea is that you will be able to go on the artist page on YouTube and you'll be able to buy the merch in the shelf and directly on the platform. We don't know what we'll take on it is, but I think it's interesting that they're actually focusing on the first artist made merchandise platform. Well, I think any other player in the game is beneficial because all there is is Teespring right now. And Teespring is trash. It's the worst imaginable user experience that you can get in 2019. It's unbelievable that that is the user experience in 2019 and they happen to have the soul partnership with YouTube, which is massive, right? I read there's a few more I read though. It wasn't just Teespring now. I haven't seen anybody else. Now they might have launched it because when they launched last year it was just Teespring. I'm sure they're going to roll out other people. So there are, I wrote it in the newsletter as a few, there is a few more I believe now. I'm not going to get the list up because. Yes. I was only aware of Teespring but then when I read about Merchbuy I also read into there was actually more of them. So let's just see. Yeah, let's definitely get me on that because I need to find somebody else. So there are fan joy and crowd made and then a couple others as well that I don't have listed but there are a few more alternatives. But the idea of this one is the first artist one. What I think is most important really is the bigger picture and the fact that YouTube is really starting to push out and dedicate more attention to YouTube music and the artists. The fact that YouTube music is now a default pre-installed app on Android phones rather than Google Play and the fact that YouTube music has now got its own algorithm-generated playlists such as to rival Spotify together weekly and release radar. They really are putting a lot more attention into getting subscribers for YouTube music and it's got to be a good thing for artists. Very much so. I, so YouTube music, most people, the numbers when it comes to music is massive from YouTube. In so many countries, YouTube is the number one platform for music. Even though we don't think about it that way, it's still adding up number wise to be the most listened to platform. So they've been trying to get into business for a long time, obviously. And I wasn't aware that they're defaulting it now, which is interesting. I'm hoping people aren't having to pay for it just yet as far as, well, they do. If you want the ad free. I think they- Trial, don't you? Yeah. Well, they did a free trial version before, which I tried out and it was actually really cool. That was like years ago. I'm sure there's been a lot of advancements since there. They might be going the Spotify route though, right? Cause you know you're already having these people listen. So they might say, look, all right, now we're just going to create a better user experience. That would be, that's the steps that I would take, right? We're going to create a better user experience for you first and just make you have to pay for ad through ad dollars. That's how people are already listening to music and having to deal with ads and things like that anyway. So take that time, get them behaviorally invested. And then after they're behaviorally invested, now we can figure out deeper ways to get in some revenue just like so many other platforms will figure out, how do we solidify? They are making these moves obviously because you've got the fact that default app and now they've got algorithm generated playlists. They've got this merchandise partnership. Soon they might have buy tickets directly in the app or crowdfunding might be incorporated directly into the app. So tipping, it's just same as Spotify. It's the journey. This is where we're heading I think. That's why I think it's so important for the artists. It's very exciting because you two were doing a similar thing to Spotify. Yeah man, it's definitely the journey. There's going to be so many artists that are like, yo man, I wish I had this stuff when I was coming up in like five years. The things that are going to exist then it's going to be just like when I left my college, I looked back the things that they have in place. I'm like, shit, I wish they had these things all there but to bring it back to Merch because that was how we brought this up. Yeah. The fact that Merch Bar, they essentially position themselves as Merch Discovery which I have two feelings about. One, nobody is looking to just discover a random artist Merch, right? Not yet at least. And so it was like to talk about Merch Discovery, I don't know if that's more selling a vision than the reality at this point. Well, I feel like that's what it is, right? Because if I like Marshmallow, because Marshmallow was on a platform, then I'm going to go in and I'm looking for Marshmallow. I came here probably because he told me with my stuff, his stuff was right here and then I looked at it. But that did get me on site, right? So maybe I do feel around a little bit. Maybe I happen to do that. But on top of that, now you add enough people doing that. Maybe it does get to a point where the ease of creation of Merch, right? Because there's so many people, companies that wholesale and allow us to drop ship and things like that. Maybe considering that entire thing, artist brands become like the new norm, right? Of a lot of the off brands that we wear, right? Because there's so many off brands that people wear or brands on the way to the big, got the big, big brands and then there's all these other little brands that people wear that still make a massive amount of money, but people aren't thinking about it when they think about, are you a relevant brand or not, right? You're not Gucci, you're not Louis, you're not this popular Sean John or any of that stuff, but you're still a very, very sustainable business that just has clothing. Now that might be a true thing for artist merch, like people might actually default towards a site like this as artist merch. I'm sure that's what their goal will be. What I like is just the fact that they're focused on artists only and that's probably going to actually focus on the brand experience more. That's where, at the end of the day it's always gonna come back there. So Teespring and just so many drop, drop shipping sites, right? They leave artists in a position where they have to sacrifice a lot of their expression and how the fan consumes that other piece of them. It's just a T-shirt, but it comes in a really ugly little box or something like that versus being able to control that experience even more so. And ultimately, if that's their business, they'll probably get to the point where you can control that experience and offer more at a lower price. That's gonna be really cool for artists at some point. It's early right now, so we'll see how long that actually takes because obviously there also is an invite only platform. Every artist can't get on it. Everybody always starts off with the big boys, right? Quicker revenue, more revenue, create something sustainable and we know there's gonna be this driver of business that comes and go top down. That's how so many people start, but I don't know, man. Yeah, we'll just have to watch. I'm just excited, bro, let me know. You gotta send me an email with these other people that you mentioned because I am definitely looking for alternatives to Teespring, but still have that feature. But as you say, it's stepping in the right direction and just to clarify that right now, you have to be in the US, you have to have an official artist channel and you have to have a merch to our store account as well to do this, but as we're saying, we're gonna have to be invited. Yeah, exactly, but as we're saying though, what we're mainly trying to talk about here is that these are very exciting things moving forward and we're also gonna keep you upstate in these new letters throughout the coming months. Like we're gonna be hands on, giving you the advice and keeping you upstate all these new terms as they roll out because there's so much gonna happen in the next six to 12 months of all these platforms. All of them, sure. Because Facebook have also been very busy. Quite a few new different features. I don't know if you checked out any of them, but the responsive ad feature where they're called it multiple text optimization. So you can create several different headlines for your ad copy and description. And then Facebook's AI will determine which one's gonna be most effective and then roll that one out. So you could write, if you're not sure which one's best for your ad copy, they'll decide which one they think it's gonna be best and push it out and test it. I love it, right? This is more of that door-to-door salesman model that I talked about, right? During that scale. Because of course you can test copy now, but it's more so, are you AB test, right? You're running two ads, they have different copy, those small iterations and you see what works. But using this AI, this extra level, that's going to be a lot less assumption involved because there's still some assumption of what did it, even if I just change one word, I guess I do know based on the isolated variables. This ad says, listen to my music now. And this other thing says music out now or something or listen to my music today, let's just keep it that simple. Instead of now, we say today, ultimately we'll be able to do that a lot faster and get far better results and tap into a recommendation engine based on the direction that Facebook is going. That part's super excited versus having to do that manually. And just in the back end, as a marketer, starting up the campaign and having to do those details, it's still a little, it's a little tedious, right? It's not the hardest thing in the world, but it's already tedious. So even from a workload perspective, it's really cool to see that, but making it that simple and how it's done so far, how they're looking to do it, I'm actually super excited about this because this is going to allow us to tap into just so many different people and so many different audiences with doing less work, right? The fact that you have somebody that doesn't work at a big corporation, right, that has access and can tap into this level of comprehensive marketing and data is always mind-boggling to me when it comes to Facebook's platform. So this is just yet another thing that's going to be a game changer. I don't know if people realize because they already still don't use A.B. testing as much as they should until it's full extent, but this is a game changer. From a PR standpoint, we live and die by every word, so it's nice to have that option. You can test different ones if you're really struggling that obviously, because words are so important. Your title and your ad copy is pivotal. So the fact that AI will test different ones, it's just, yes, it makes your life a lot easier. The only annoying thing is that, so it's going to be available within the next couple of weeks, but you won't be able to see how each of the different texts did. You won't be able to compare the different ones yet, which is a bit annoying, but I'm sure that will roll out eventually. So they're showing you, what they're showing you, no, they're going to move towards the result, right? They're going to give you the proper result, but they're not going to tell you that, hey, How each, yeah, they'll give you the best one, but they're not going to tell you. In the demos, they actually, they are showing that, but they said they won't be available upon release immediately. Yeah, that does say. But you're still getting the best one. You know, they're giving you the best one. You just won't have to see how much better it did compared to other ones, but obviously it's going to roll out eventually, and then you'll be able to get a lot stronger at your, right on your ad copy in the future, but you know which ones work best last time you've learned, and you're just going to care on doing the same, repeat the same model. So it's a very powerful tool, it's good. The same with their new open search feature. So, you know how we have ads in the newsfeed in the marketplace. Now, when you go to the search bar and you type in something, you'll see the same ad appear if it's relevant to your target audience and the topic of conversation. So, I'm not quite sure how this is going to impact artists so much yet, but if you are searching for a particular artist, you are going to see their adverts come up in the search bar before you even found them. So it's another way of communicating your products. Yeah, I don't think that'll affect artists too much right now, for sure. I can't see it where I would, yeah, I can't see any period where I would be recommending that as a platform, maybe for retargeting purposes. And most just create that omnipresence of, hey, okay, cool, you listen to my music or you discover my ads on this platform and then just what you happen to be searching on Facebook will pop up and you see us. We're not trying to get you to listen this way, you just see us and remind you we exist, but because that's how you can leverage Google. Like I've worked with several companies that they leverage Google ads and YouTube ads in that same way, more as a searchability thing, but Facebook, I don't even, I personally don't, I don't search anything on Facebook really, for the most part. The entire word is to go and search nice to like their page, to get updates in the feed. That's the only time I do it. Yeah, exactly, all right. Like I'm, and it's so specific when I am doing it, I'm not personally affected by that, but I guess- But you would see their ad in there if you did search. Right, I would see it. That's why I'm saying it's more of a retargeting, just to remind you I exist or it's just trying to hope you get driven towards a specific action. That's at most what I can see right now, but it's nothing I would, in any short term, even long term, I can see it. I don't know if I would ever invest, I would ever recommend an indie, especially to even look at that. There's already too many other options with bigger impact. I wouldn't say that one's gonna be too relevant just yet. But yeah, the options there, it just, it displays exactly the same as a new feed ad. You can have a single image, you could have a video or a carousel, which is weird. How in that big thing on the search is gonna be, it's gonna be there. So you see it in the future, that's why. It's gonna be very good for you just selling products, you know, if you have a company, yeah, so. Hell yeah, for products. Yeah, so it's gonna be. Great. So yeah, it's just starting to bear in mind. If you see it, that's what it is. That's its capabilities. And the other thing for Facebook is their new live video publishing tools, which I really like because when you do a live and you go on, you do Facebook Live or Instagram Live, you're never quite sure if it's gonna go the way you want it to go and it's gonna look the same, it's gonna look right. So you can now do like a test rehearsal. So you can invite your other page admins or editors to check that your video is working properly and it's all, you know, framed correctly and it's all looking as it should be before you actually go live, which I really like because, you know, you could do a whole video and then be like, oh, shit, the lighting's bad or it hasn't come out or it's laggy or, you know. This person's not, this person's muted like, so you can check all these things. And also, you can now also trim the video as well. So you can cut off the beginning and the end, which is always, again, a very useful tool when you then repost it. Yeah, simple, but hey, better quality. Little things, yeah. Yeah, just a little things. Yeah, I think that's instantly valuable. And the other thing you're gonna like as well is the Creator Studio features, which you discovered recently. Yeah. Yeah, so the native Instagram scheduling, loyalty insights to show returning viewers to your videos. It shows you like which people come, keep going back continuously. And it also has got this new distribution metric that allocates a score to your videos. So they base that score on one minute views, average minutes watched and retention of the audience and gives you a score based on how each of the videos been performing. Man. So. I freaking love Facebook on that. You use these tools. Yeah, get on Facebook, Creator Studio. There's a lot of stuff you can do that you don't even know about. Yeah, I mean, at least on that aspect of Facebook, I love like from the marketing side. Because even back when I first discovered that you can essentially, you're retargeting for your Instagram is built in, right? Instagram is a built in page where you don't have to have pixels on your Instagram, right? To retarget on there and things like that. That was huge. And they're constantly moving towards being the new website for people, for real, for real, right? That's essentially what they're becoming. And even as Facebook is less relevant, right? The Instagram is gonna become the new Facebook in some sort, right? So like that's why I don't encourage people to say, okay, get rid of Instagram completely, especially if you know how to use these ads and understand the information that's coming. Because man, the loyalty thing, that is great. Yeah, definitely. You see people who are loyal to my content, that's more than just first level retargeting, right? I get to actually see and get data on the people who are, like their frequency on my page. That's a different level of interaction and there's a different level of customization and attention that I can give those people. You can DM them then as well. I can DM them, right? So as an artist, I could really be like, yo, man, I really appreciate your support. It's kind of, it's semi what they offer on SoundCloud, right? But it's even, it's better. I already, the things that I'm hearing about it is just better. So yeah, like I can DM them. I can now say, I can offer them specials. Shout them out, frame them alive. Shout them out, all these things just, right? From the data versus me even having to run a contest to do these things and all that kind of stuff, right? So it's even cheapening fan loyalty and engagement because when fans see this type of interaction, right? Now that I know, these are the people who are worth doing it with. And now that I do it with these people and I know they're gonna speak for me and I can show people that these interactions as well. So whether it's like a free merch or I go visit them or one-on-one, whatever that thing is, the ability to document it as well, those things actually create stronger fans. Funny enough, when fans just see you treating other fans, right? Even if they aren't the one that you're talking with. So that in itself is gonna create for better community and culture and be great for marketing as well. But yeah, that loyalty thing, that's the, well, Instagram is immediately, like the only reason I found out about it, like when I told you, right? Cory had told me, he had just found out about it. And we've been both posting a lot more IGTV videos. So that right there is just like, yo, bro, this is- Game changer. Game changer, immediately for us. And then you add on the fact that there are some apps that allow for automated IGTV. I'm not IGTV, just IG- IG posts, yeah. But my reservation with them has always been just the fact that it seems that Instagram throttles the interactions with those things, right? And it all makes sense, right? We wanna increase your time on our site, because so you're not even going on the site if you're just auto-scheduling. And we also wanna increase, you know? And so, all right, now I'll change the points. So if we can't, and we know that people really want this thing, at least come through us to do it so we can gather some other form of data, right? And we have some other form of benefit from that. So I think there's gonna be less throttling of that interaction and suppressing organic reach, which is already tough, right? So it's gonna be less of that when you go through their native app, which, yeah, I'm just super excited about, man. I've already started using that since I discovered it, well, or was told about it. I don't wanna be Christopher Columbus and that was like, I discovered something first, but since I've been on it, right? I've been using it a lot and this is gonna be another thing that just makes it so much easier, the creator studio. And it's funny, when, obviously, I found out about it, it almost became a duh moment. Like, why didn't they have this already? I didn't even know that I was using it. I didn't think about either, I haven't even noticed it until recently, I guess. Yeah, it's like, y'all should have been doing this. It's the same way that YouTube has their creator studio, they should have had that, right? Even though they're ahead in that ad game, that part of things and that the content output side is what YouTube wins in, right? Controlling your content and all these other things. But it also shows me long term, Facebook is gonna get really interesting when it comes to copyrights, how YouTube can get very annoying when it comes to copyrights. They're so serious about it. Yeah, Facebook is getting there. They're giving it some time, they will be there. IGTV is longer form content. It doesn't make sense to really do copyrights on these short videos back when they had 15 second videos and even necessarily 60 second videos because it's not full content, but IGTV up to 10 minutes? Yeah, you're- How's it? Go ahead. Interesting example, I couldn't even, so I couldn't even post my brother's single lyric video on his own Instagram page. He got copyright blocked, his own single. Yeah. Wow, why? But I don't know, but there's another comparison. Yeah, but I can post my, the producer I managed, I can post his lyric video on my own IGTV page, but I can't post my brother's single on his own IGTV page. So I really can't figure that one out. See? Nice sense. I mean, another thing that lends towards the fact that they're going to get serious about this is the fact that you can monetize content on YouTube. I mean, on Facebook already. Right? So once monetization steps into the game and people can make money, that's when the copyright things becomes more of a serious thing to mandate, right? So when you add the longer form content coming to IGTV, if it starts on Facebook, you can pretty much be assured at some point, Facebook is going to try to figure out how we can get it on to IGTV. So that's going to be something to watch out for. That's going to suck considering how, I don't know how they're going to deal with repost culture because that's such a strong part of it. Right? Instagram, I hope they don't ruin that part of the platform. And it definitely will suck for me because I had definitely leveraged repost, but. You saw it now. Yeah. Make the most of it now. That's really my mentality. I was like, let me do as much as I can with it right now because I don't know how long I'll be able to do it. But at the very least, I hope, because I'm not looking to monetize, right? At least right now, it is just. Just awareness, just yeah. Awareness. So at the very least, maybe they'll just say, hey, look, we'll take your ad dollars like YouTube does on some videos. We copyright it. You're cool. You're not getting any strikes or anything like that. And we're not blocking it, but we're going to run ads on this and we're going to get money to the owner. Cool. Probably be annoying for the user experience side of it. But as long as I'm able to do what I'm doing, I'm able to do, right? I'll be good. Yeah, exactly. But the key takeaways for this says check out Facebook's creator studio. Definitely. I'm keeping out for the other features like rolling out soon with the ads and stuff. But yeah, the Facebook creator studio is the number one thing you need to be looking at as an indie right now. Yeah, for those who are just listening, definitely check out Facebook creator studio and we'll start putting links to these things in the description as well. Another thing to quickly touch on that we just, I just told you about today is this new music work for the app called Bounce, which just rolled out to everyone. And the idea of bounce is that it streamlines file sharing to document the creation of a record. So it allows music creators and their team to organize different track stems, different recordings, the metadata, different versions, and you can securely send demos to each other within this platform. And I think the idea of having to document a journey from the original like voice memos to the final product is gonna be really interesting as one standpoint. On the other hand, you've also got a really secure platform to store metadata so that everyone has got the credits they deserve and they should have for their contributions to the song. Yeah, there's so many companies that have done this that have been trying to tackle this space, right? Splimey. Even tried to do that, but they've found that it was just much bigger of a market in the sound space than heavily on that collaboration side because there's so much to how musicians are already in their own like, they already have their own workflow. All right, so trying to get them to collaborate and do things across is very hard. There's been a lot of apps that have tried to get people or yeah, to try to get people to collaborate in real time. A lot of people working on that. Across platforms, but it just doesn't work. But this focusing on just the workflow of the process. I can't remember the apps that I knew about that were doing this, but there were a few people a couple of years ago that were trying to do a version of this. I think that part is really cool for those reasons that you said. Because right now, yes, it's really dope that like I could just save my voice note and share it with somebody. But now this all is being organized. It allows me to strategically consider it as a part of the campaign versus having to remember to save it and keep it somewhere and all that kind of stuff. So activating it as a part of a campaign. The example you use was Selena Gomez, right? People could hear her voice note when she first came up with the song. That was a really cool example because I know fans would love that and eat that up and to see a part of that journey. And we know how much documenting is just become a serious part of marketing in itself. So this is just another thing that allows you to... That will long-term allow you to utilize a part of the canvas as your actual marketing campaign when you bring exposure to different parts of the process. So I love this. There's so many different... Obviously, when you're recording a track there's so many different versions it goes through. You've got the original voice memos, the original lyrics and you've got different versions of the original demos that are just made with the basic instruments and you've got the actual live instruments coming in or professional instruments. Like the evolution is just all gonna be in this one app. And what I like about it most is that you don't even need the app to be part of the process. They can... You can send a song or a place to anyone and they can just put your phone number and then when you're ready, you can go in to download the app if you want to. But you can send your files without even needing the app. And their main aims for this app are to use bounce as a vehicle to showcase these multiple versions of the track and also even use it as a passive income for streaming. Like you could... Other artists could take some of the stems from the original demos and make their own tracks. And sample them. And that's an excellent feature. That right there is. Because it's similar to... I don't know if you're familiar with the fact that obviously people sell loops, right? But then you also have people who sell hooks, right? And people are always trying to figure out how to do these things. These are samples, placements, right? Since all these things are already there, this is just allowing that to happen on an easier way for the indie, right? Democratizing the process a little bit. So they might end up with a database to... I don't know how they're gonna really use that feature or allow people to access and search that feature. But that could be a cool database to see where now I can just go through that platform and listen to music and then I see, oh, I like this song. Let me go open up the stems and find a piece as a part of my production. That'll be really cool. Because they might have... I don't know if you use certain melodies, but they then scrapped and didn't make the final product you could use and do something with. Like, yeah, this whole... Didn't Kanye release... Like Life of Palli, didn't he release different sections of the song on different stems? There's something he did, but he documented parts of the journey. No, it was just like a few years ago. Kanye released different parts of the creation of the song, like where it started to how it ended up. No, I don't remember that. I think... I don't know if following Kanye on a lot of this stuff over the last few years. I take my doses. I think he did, but I'll have to look into it. But many things to this app is that Bounce is available on iOS now and will be on Android early next year. Obviously, it's very early days. This is just... But the vision and the goals are there and they're heading in the right direction, I feel. And I think it's going to be... We've talked about the discovery side, but also the metadata side is so important because it's a bit of a mess at the moment in industry, like keeping track of... Make sure everyone gets pay what they deserve for their contributions to the song. But you've got it all in this one app. And it's like... It's there in black and white and everyone can control what they did for the song. It's going to be a lot easier to get the payments right. Yeah, I hope this one lasts. I really like the vision to see a lot of benefits from different angles that we could touch on as it goes, but I actually know this one lasts. I've just been... It's been so many. Yeah, I've seen so many and you don't hear about them the next year. So just getting over the first year, getting to a point where you have a true position and the right customer base and all that stuff in place is hard enough. So, yeah, let's root for them. Yeah, they seem serious. Now they've got the press coverage on Billboard. They've got the financial back in. It doesn't matter. Yeah. It's just, I'm just holding out hope. Yeah, yeah, it's been so many. You're going to raise 50 million, have every record label behind you and all that stuff. Yeah. The barrier to consumers, that's the hardest part. That's why on shows like Shark Tank, right? They'll be like, what are your actual sales? Because that's the part, like all the other stuff is cool until you get the actual consumer and they're coming back. Not just tried it out one time, but now they repeat and it's sticky. That's the thing. And getting people out of their current systems, even for something better, is always difficult. At least for this one, they are trying to do lots of different things in one, whereas a lot of them are just focusing on metadata storage or just STEM storage. But at least with this, there are multiple revenues where you can make some money from. There are like storing multiple facets. But Austin, I'll argue against that though, because. Normally you would, but in the context of this, I'm not sure, because the others have failed. Like they have to, they still have to have an entry point where at least one of those things, they focus on being really dope at. So people keep coming back for that sticky issue. You're not going to have people be sticky for five different things immediately. So I like the roadmap I love, but where they're starting out with things, I wonder which feature they're going to be looking at for sure, for sure, as the repeat. And because what they're thinking right now, I don't know how much customer discovery in, this probably did do beta, is it beta now or this is after beta? It's now public, it's after beta now. Okay, so I'm sure they've discovered some things and they know which part, I haven't got a chance to look into that, which part they want to be the sticky thing, but I do love the direction in those features that'll be added on. I think there's going to be a lot of benefit for being on that platform, but I'm just, you know, I'm just scoring because I know how hard it is to actually achieve and make that happen. The dopest part of everything you've talked about on that platform is the fact that you don't have to be on it to get it. I would say use it, right? Because now it's once again, making it just that much easier for you to become familiar with it and get you into that marketing funnel from awareness down to, you know, hopefully power user, I'm sure, that's what they're looking for. So I like it. I love particularly that STEMs aspect. The next thing will be, how do we allow people to utilize that? It's a capable capability, but I'm interested to get in the backend to see how easy it is. Are you helping me? You create the STEMs and make this process super easy. Are you helping me find customers? Because that from a producer side, right? And the artist side is gonna be the thing that they really want, right? Oh man, you're helping me find customers. It's cool that I can do this, but if I already have trouble finding a fan base, now you saying I have to go find customers is another headache that I'm not even good at yet. There's a lot of room to grow, yeah? I think the main focus for them initially is gonna be destroy sending up demos and having more in one place it can get a very, very messy with all the various Google Drive folders and Dropboxes and having them all in one place for everyone to work on at the same time. That is the, I'm sure that would be the initial focus, I think. Right, right. It'd be like Google Drive and Dropbox catering to artists. Yeah, that's where I see them focusing on initially, I think, from what I've read. Which I think it's a good place to start, I think. Just get everyone familiar with how it works, not breaks, and then expand the features from there. So that's bounce. So that's pretty much the main news topics this month. There's been quite a lot of happening as it always is, but I thought we'd end with a few social media trend predictions for 2020. So I read the Talk Walker and HubSpot report which broke down various different marketing strategies moving forward, and I've sort of adapted it for the music industry, some key takeaways. So number one which you'll love is TikTok will be part of your marketing strategy next year, no matter what. As you bang that one about for, you know, everyone just get on TikTok, as Sean's been saying for, you know, forever now, like nearly 750 million monthly active users, 66% of the users are under 30. So, you know, you've got a good base target for the younger generation there. 750 million? Yeah, monthly active users. I didn't even realize that number was that big yet. So yeah, bro, all right. So it's a wrap. Just get on it, yeah. An interesting one, social media wellness is going to be an essential part of consumer engagement and they're predicting because, so apparently there's been 78,000 conversations about social media wellness in 2019 online and there's a national day of unplugging in the US which gained quite a few thousand mentions and there's obviously, the main thing for this is the fact that Instagram are gonna be highly likes and experimenting with that right now, aren't they? And the idea that this might get away from the superficial and lead more into active engagements because, you know, if I'm going through Instagram right now, I would just like saying to say that I've seen and interacted with this person, but if that isn't that option, like you might encourage you more to actually comment on their posts instead, if they can't see the number of likes, like it might be more active engagement. So. True, actually for me, honestly, they've actually started doing that over the last few days. It was weird and I couldn't figure out what I was like, what's going on, something's missing. And I noticed I can see, you know, how someone has, let's just say a hundred likes and you'll see like two names. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't see the number. Yeah. I have no idea how many likes people have on my Instagram right now. Because I think they might, yeah, and they might move it to, you might not even see eventually any, your own personal likes. So you might be encouraged to leave comments instead just to, you know, engage with you. I think we're gonna get a lot more active engagement moving forward if they do commit to this route forward. Now all links into the social wellness and you know, like quality messaging and making sure that, you know, people have a happy experience online. So they've said that you'll have fewer opportunities to engage with fans if they're not gonna go on such media so much, you need to really focus on your key messages. And they've also suggested things like, you know, rather than push the music to your fans, you know, share stories, tell jokes, ask questions, share what you believe in, you know, get involved in social causes. Like, it's just a new way. Just think you're really gonna have to adapt your thinking of how to communicate with your fans in the future if we are going away from this passive engagement or towards active engagement. More and more personal, allow them to get closer to you. Which comes back to my dark social point from the beginning of the conversation about, you know, the private communities. Like that's the way, that's the direction we're heading in, I think. Yeah. And we're doing a video, by the way, that kind of touches on that. Okay, cool. Why there aren't gonna be as many superstars. Yeah, makes sense, yeah. Yeah. Generation Z will only engage if you pivot your strategy. So the prediction is that by 2021, mobile search advertising will exceed desktop advert spend on Instagram in the US for the first time, which makes sense. 84% of millennials say they don't trust traditional advertising. They talked about new methods of advertising, such as voice search and social media e-commerce and smart speakers and things like new ways to advertise. And the other big thing as well is that you're gonna invest a lot more in user-generated content because 90% of purchasing decisions are led by user-generated content right now. And obviously, the most liked image on Instagram is an egg. So that's the most liked image on Instagram is an egg, not an influence or not a person, it's just an egg. So someone just created that and said, just try and get the most likes on the platform. That's just user-generated content, so. Yeah, that's, it's just indirect media, like really controlling environment versus coming direct with messages. That's gonna be interesting. I understand that we say that and we don't trust it, but in some ways I feel like it'll get to a point where people consuming as just another piece of content. Even if they see that as an ad, they'll actually get rid of the whole idea because we have these platforms like Instagram and Facebook that are really trying to make it meaningful. When I asked Facebook and all these other platforms that are really trying to make marketing meaningful. We're not just seeing a whole bunch of BS. Okay, if you have BS and it's not relevant to our consumers, then we're gonna keep that ad from showing to people. So there's gonna get a quality of advertising to a point that happens where people truly do consider the things that they see, but they don't put it above or below any other piece of content they're pursuing. Right now there's like a negative connotation to ads, but I think it's gonna get to equilibrium at some point where people are just so, they are so, what's the word I'm thinking? They just think so independently and they're so based on their own opinion. They actually analyze things for what they are versus all these other stigmas attached to it of how it came to me. You get what I mean? And this links as well to micro-influences having a lot more influence than the big superstars do as well because they're more, you're interacting with them a lot more at a personal level. You trust them a lot more because they're not so distant from you. They've got a smaller following. You've grown up with them, you feel more connected to them. So I think you'll be utilizing a lot more micro-influences next year as opposed to trying to go for the bigger ones. If you're going down that route, I think it's just a lot more impactful. They have a lot higher engagement rates as well. And they're cheaper. You can tell the numbers are there and they're cheaper. And also they get a lot more engagement in terms of percentage. Yeah, they'll probably be the anti-wave. We talk about it from a marketing standpoint, but the marketing is only really following the consumer engagement perspective anyway. So if the marketing dollars are showing that it's better to go micro-influencers, it's probably a symptom of people truly trying to detach away from these general level superstars. Like, okay, I'm looking for the anti-star, which is something so many people do when they're teenagers anyway, but now even doing that from an influencer standpoint, that's not just music. I'm going to look at, these people are the big corporations. That's almost what the influencers represent at some point. It's like, these are the big general companies, but that doesn't speak to my personality. That's just another voice in my life versus something I feel closely attached to. So that'll be interesting to see. And that all links to your point about was going to be less superstars, because if everyone's moving towards the dark social, those people are going to get seen on the bigger platforms. If the hiding likes are going to get less engagement anyway, it's just all sort of feeding into less of like the absolute mega-stars now. And it'll be a lot less important to represent the community and more important to control the community. Yeah. That's what it's going to lend to and the people who are smart, they'll do that. Like, I'm not the superstar. It's not so ego-based. Right? Like, everybody has to love me. No, I run this community and I get the indirect social positioning because I run this community, but other than that, it just sell fees. And maybe I find profit models off of just running the community itself. Yes, well, I would say for you guys out there now, I'd really focus on trying to build your own community. Also, you grow your brand at the same time and try and get the engagement, but you really just focus on your core fans because they're the ones that are going to fund your career moving forward anyway. And especially when we're moving towards this really sort of like, what's the word I'm looking for? Like, you know, small community-based things rather than like the big, wide web. So yeah, just focus on building your community, definitely. Yep, I've been huge on that, by the way. Like, you have been at Jason Contrast. Even if it doesn't have to be around you, right? Doesn't have to be weird. You like reading books under some areas. I'm thinking that might be Ari Lennox or somebody. I think she has a book club now. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like Tom DeMell, man, you don't know him, but he's a local artist in Atlanta. He has like a Discord group, right? That, and people who are interested and they're just chatting about those things, right? There's so many different things that your fans are- To be anything, yeah. Yeah, that they're interested in. If you like- You like it too? Yeah, if you like anime, making anime community around your music. If you like a particular sport, like just find something that means a lot to you. That's how your music can just try and bring it in and see which ones share the same opinion as you and just really build out from that. That's it. That's it. I think that's the perfect place to end the conversation. I think that's the key message, yeah. Oh, cool. Lots to unpack, yeah. A lot of things to unpack. Again, the first episode of Music News That Matters. Give us any kind of feedback that you guys have. We're definitely going to keep evolving how we present this, but this is the beginning of, again, a goal and vision of making really relevant news to artists far more digestible and maybe even a little entertaining. So, as always, if you like this video, go ahead and like button. If you like it, you might as well share it and if you are not subscribed, you know what to do. Hit that subscribe button. It's the network.